I am an accountant/consultant with a large accounting firm. Very rarely do we ever demand that a client use a particular accounting program. It isn't as though accounting firms want clients to use inflexible programs. We have more reasons to be frustrated with Quickbooks than non-accountants. The heart of the problem is that there are few accounting packages out there for small to mid-sized companies. At the firm I work for, I don't think we are closed-minded at all. I think that most people in the firm would welcome new accounting packages for small to mid-sized companies.
We do have a philosophical problem with selling our customer list. Paul and I, particularly Paul, do not like receiving unsolicited advertising of any type. Selling our customer list would be terribly hypocritical. Thank you for bringing up a good point. Perhaps it is time we do add a privacy policy to our web site.
I am an accountant with a Big 5 firm. While I do actually prepare taxes, I studied tax accounting and am dangerously close to becoming a licenced CPA. (I sailed though the tax portion of the exam, having problems with the law portion.)
There seems to be some confusion here about what is a tax deduction vs a tax credit. A deduction is subtracted from your gross income to determine your taxable income. The tax you owe is based upon your taxable income. A tax credit is a reduction of the tax that you owe. Having a tax credit does you no good if you have no income and pay no taxes.
As mentioned earlier, in order for you to take deductions, you must have income. For many types of income, such as hobby income, you can only take deductions to the extent of your income. No money to be made here.
Now on to the R&D Tax Credit - that is what those in the tax business call it. The idea of this credit is to get US businesses to invest in R&D. The tax law usually responds to the current trends in the economy. This credit came about when there was a lot of talk and attention about the US falling behind in technology development.
Now let's dive into this section of the code - which is section 41 if you are interest.
First, the credit is not for 100% of all R&D expenses. It is actually only 20% of expenses that exceed a calculated base amount. There is a list of what expenses qualify, and they have to be actual out of pocket expenses. Not working and sitting at home working on open source projects does not qualify as an expense. The base amount is calculated by using the average annual gross receipts of the taxpayer. No receipts = base amount = no credit.
Qualified Research is the next issue. Found in 41.d.1.a
Qualified Research is undertakenfor the purpose of discovering information which is technical in nature AND the application of which is intended to be useful in the development of a new or impoved business component of the taxpayer. Paragraph D also has some restrictions on software credits.
As I was just reading through this section of tax code, my engineer bf walked in and said all that jibberish made no sense to him. I think him trying to read tax code is like me trying to read the Stevens book on that TCP/IP stuff.
I am an analyst at a Big 5 Accounting firm. I spend a great deal of my day doing research on the Internet. I am usually search for information on somewhat obscure industries, such as kidney dialysis. I have found that Google is consistantly the better search engine for my needs. I particularly like that it is so much faster that the other sites, it seems primarily because they don't have any of those obnoxious banner ads. More and more sites I visit are littered with ads from Double Click.
While I love the fact that Google has stayed away from advertising, I've also done enough research on Internet content providers, Internet Portals, etc. to know that they won't be around that long if they don't start generating positive cash flow. Because they are selling anything tangible, this means to generate incoming cash flow they have to sell services. For an Internet company, selling services most likely means selling advertising. Let's face it, people generally belive that information should be free on the Internet. I work for one of the largest accounting firms in the world, and I spend a great deal of time looking for free research and information on the internet because the belief is that if it is on the Internet, it should be free.
The point is, I would rather see Google start selling ads, staying away from the obnoxious Double Click banner ads, and stay around as one of the better search engines. Not enough people will pay for search service to generate enough cash flow to keep Google around.
Incidently, if you looked through the 10k filing of Andover.Net (use Edgar Scan a data base by a comptetive firm or Free Edgar), and go all the way into the notes of the financial statements, all the way to page 61 of the report, you will find the pro forma financial statement on Slashdot. For the year ending September 1999, Slashdot was profitable. All of the revenue was generated from advertising.
I've noticed a few comments about *the letters* that went out for the Red Hat IPO and letter recipients inability to participate with e*trade. Looking at the Transmeta's IPO information it doesn't appear that individuals will be invited to participate in the IPO. The lead underwriters of the offering are the *Big Boys* of investment banking - Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Salomon Smith Barney, and a few others. No mention of any "e-" company involved with this deal.
You can't really compare this to a.com IPO. This company is actually selling something tangible. It appears as though they should actually make some profit once they start selling something.
I think we are socialized from a young age into gender roles. There has been a long held belief in our society that programming and "computer things" are "boy-things" and not okay for girls to do.
I am a geek, and I am a girl. Well, make that geek light as I am not programmer.....yet. I have found that as an analyst for a big 5 accounting firm, it is my technical skills that are in the most demand, not my accountanting skills.
I think that technology needs to be better integrated with more areas of interest to kids. The exposure to and the encouragement to get involved with technology needs to happen at a young age, and without gender bias (in a perfect world).
The proper pronunciation is will-AM-et, not WILL-a-metty.
I kinda wonder if a bunch of highly paid marketing types sat around in a conference room drinking lattes spent way too much time talking about what to name the chip.
Slashdot Mirror
I am an accountant/consultant with a large accounting firm. Very rarely do we ever demand that a client use a particular accounting program. It isn't as though accounting firms want clients to use inflexible programs. We have more reasons to be frustrated with Quickbooks than non-accountants. The heart of the problem is that there are few accounting packages out there for small to mid-sized companies. At the firm I work for, I don't think we are closed-minded at all. I think that most people in the firm would welcome new accounting packages for small to mid-sized companies.
We do have a philosophical problem with selling our customer list. Paul and I, particularly Paul, do not like receiving unsolicited advertising of any type. Selling our customer list would be terribly hypocritical. Thank you for bringing up a good point. Perhaps it is time we do add a privacy policy to our web site.
As mentioned earlier, in order for you to take deductions, you must have income. For many types of income, such as hobby income, you can only take deductions to the extent of your income. No money to be made here.
Now on to the R&D Tax Credit - that is what those in the tax business call it. The idea of this credit is to get US businesses to invest in R&D. The tax law usually responds to the current trends in the economy. This credit came about when there was a lot of talk and attention about the US falling behind in technology development.
Now let's dive into this section of the code - which is section 41 if you are interest. First, the credit is not for 100% of all R&D expenses. It is actually only 20% of expenses that exceed a calculated base amount. There is a list of what expenses qualify, and they have to be actual out of pocket expenses. Not working and sitting at home working on open source projects does not qualify as an expense. The base amount is calculated by using the average annual gross receipts of the taxpayer. No receipts = base amount = no credit. Qualified Research is the next issue. Found in 41.d.1.a Qualified Research is undertakenfor the purpose of discovering information which is technical in nature AND the application of which is intended to be useful in the development of a new or impoved business component of the taxpayer. Paragraph D also has some restrictions on software credits.
As I was just reading through this section of tax code, my engineer bf walked in and said all that jibberish made no sense to him. I think him trying to read tax code is like me trying to read the Stevens book on that TCP/IP stuff.
I am an analyst at a Big 5 Accounting firm. I spend a great deal of my day doing research on the Internet. I am usually search for information on somewhat obscure industries, such as kidney dialysis. I have found that Google is consistantly the better search engine for my needs. I particularly like that it is so much faster that the other sites, it seems primarily because they don't have any of those obnoxious banner ads. More and more sites I visit are littered with ads from Double Click.
While I love the fact that Google has stayed away from advertising, I've also done enough research on Internet content providers, Internet Portals, etc. to know that they won't be around that long if they don't start generating positive cash flow. Because they are selling anything tangible, this means to generate incoming cash flow they have to sell services. For an Internet company, selling services most likely means selling advertising. Let's face it, people generally belive that information should be free on the Internet. I work for one of the largest accounting firms in the world, and I spend a great deal of time looking for free research and information on the internet because the belief is that if it is on the Internet, it should be free.
The point is, I would rather see Google start selling ads, staying away from the obnoxious Double Click banner ads, and stay around as one of the better search engines. Not enough people will pay for search service to generate enough cash flow to keep Google around.
Incidently, if you looked through the 10k filing of Andover.Net (use Edgar Scan a data base by a comptetive firm or Free Edgar), and go all the way into the notes of the financial statements, all the way to page 61 of the report, you will find the pro forma financial statement on Slashdot. For the year ending September 1999, Slashdot was profitable. All of the revenue was generated from advertising.
I've noticed a few comments about *the letters* that went out for the Red Hat IPO and letter recipients inability to participate with e*trade. Looking at the Transmeta's IPO information it doesn't appear that individuals will be invited to participate in the IPO. The lead underwriters of the offering are the *Big Boys* of investment banking - Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Salomon Smith Barney, and a few others. No mention of any "e-" company involved with this deal.
.com IPO. This company is actually selling something tangible. It appears as though they should actually make some profit once they start selling something.
You can't really compare this to a
I think we are socialized from a young age into gender roles. There has been a long held belief in our society that programming and "computer things" are "boy-things" and not okay for girls to do.
I am a geek, and I am a girl. Well, make that geek light as I am not programmer.....yet. I have found that as an analyst for a big 5 accounting firm, it is my technical skills that are in the most demand, not my accountanting skills.
I think that technology needs to be better integrated with more areas of interest to kids. The exposure to and the encouragement to get involved with technology needs to happen at a young age, and without gender bias (in a perfect world).
The proper pronunciation is will-AM-et, not WILL-a-metty.
I kinda wonder if a bunch of highly paid marketing types sat around in a conference room drinking lattes spent way too much time talking about what to name the chip.